The Best Laid Plans of the Force and Men
by StreetCornerProphet
Summary: Post TSL: Together again, but the reunion is nothing like they had planned…


It was not the reunion she had pictured. But then again, what exactly had she pictured? They had not been on good terms when she left so she was not totally surprised when they did not embrace and laugh upon meeting up. Their bond was the War and with that over and done with, did that mean their friendship was gone too? Was that why words passed so slowly and painfully between them? The Exile gnawed at her bottom lip desperately. Was it merely an awkwardness that sat between them? Some shame on Revan's part for being the Dark Lord of the Sith? Or was it really that their friendship had died on Malachor V? Falling to the dark side changes a person, and even though Revan had returned to the light the Exile could sense the difference, see the difference within her once friend. He was haggard, beaten, run ragged from the dreams of what he once was and the fear of what he might become again. The Exile wondered how different she appeared from the days of the war. Had she grown older looking? She assumed she had, especially with the lifestyle she lived while dealing with her Force loss. Had she grown as faded as Revan? She couldn't tell. The Force flowed with her again and with it she could never feel as worn out as she had without it. She glanced over at him from her place in the co-pilot's seat. He never looked at her. Was there some horrendous tale of woe in her eyes? Still? Did she still carry her Force Wound and cast it out around her? Slowly she stood, trying to make as little noise as possible. His presence brought her back to her days in the Academy with him the star pupil and her the admiring youngling. He brought her back to the days of studying, studying, studying just to be half as good as Revan and never realizing that she had always been as good as Revan just with half the confidence.

He looked over.

She froze.

"I'm going to the refresher. To take a shower."

He acknowledged her by looking away.

After her shower she decided not to go back to the cockpit. The silence there was suffocating. Instead she went to the room where she slept, alone now since the ship was only occupied by two humans. She sat on her bed and leaned back against the cold wall of the Hawk. She was lonelier than she had ever been. Her hands sought out her pazaak deck and began to shuffle it idly. Revan didn't play pazaak and it was no fun to play against T3-M4 because the droid always won; Atton might have been right about it cheating. She felt her throat tighten as her companion's name crossed her mind ever so casually. Atton. How she missed his jokes and comments, his conversation and his games. Even his silence was not as damaging as Revan's because with Atton's there was substance behind it and always an end in sight. Being locked away on the ship with Revan was like being locked away with another droid. The Exile would reach out with the Force to feel for Revan, to feel for his humanity and he would use the Force to push her back into her own mind. Eventually she stopped trying and resigned herself to the cold that exuded off him.

Distantly she realized she was still shuffling her deck. She placed it down and put her hands over her face. She could still feel the faint presences of her former companions. Still feel their bumbling steps into the Force. Still feel their growing prowess as much as she could feel their growing love for her and resentment of each other. They all balanced on a blade's edge, but could she blame them? So did she. One moment protector of the galaxy, the next destroyer of lives. One moment a nothing with no ties to anything, the next a Jedi with so many padawans. One moment a General, the next a simpering fool reminiscing about the past. Her shoulders shook as her thoughts took their harsh turn. She would always rise so high to fall so far.

"Statement: Not-Master, the Master wishes me to inform you that it is time for the daily ingestion of carbohydrates, sugars, and vitamins. What a disgusting meat bag ritual." She looked up at the bronze assassin droid who doted and fawned over Revan. The droid who treated her like a second class citizen. The droid that Revan talked to more than he would even look at her.

"Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!" She screamed, throwing her pazaak deck at the droid when the Force would have been much more effective. HK-47 merely tilted his head to the side and turned to leave the Exile alone, querying to himself why the master wouldn't just let him get rid of her. "Shut up…" she muttered one last time, placing her hands back over face and pulling her knees to her chest. She wanted off the ship. She wanted off this mission. A Jedi's life is sacrifice, but was she even a Jedi again?

She felt Revan walk by some time later. He stalled at her door. She waited to feel him leave again but he didn't. She looked over. The tears had long since dried and she was now in a much calmer mood than when she had attacked HK. In some small way she regretted it. The droid was only coming to tell her about dinner. She would apologize, though she knew that the proud assassin droid wouldn't take it well. He was as haughty and arrogant as any human. The Exile supposed that if he liked her better he might make for some decent conversation. The droid only had eyes for Revan though, like so many other people in her life. The Exile thought that if Revan weren't Revan she might have resented him, maybe even hated him. To live in an Academy where one student was the star and everyone else lived in his shadow? The Jedi were not supposed to be like that and yet Revan's talent had them all dumbfounded. For the Exile it was easier to accept because she was younger; she wondered if Malak ever found himself secretly jealous of Revan. She wondered if that was why Malak fell so far.

"Here." Revan handed her the collected cards of the pazaak deck she had thrown. He had picked them up off the floor while she sat idle with her thoughts. Tentatively she took them from his hands, her eyes cast down and heavy from previous tears.

"Thank you."

Silence,

Silence.

Silence. The Exile sighed and turned away from Revan, fixing the bed spread that she hadn't even messed and waiting for him to leave. Then, for the first time she felt something. It was like a tiny drop of water breaking free from ice and she felt it hit her and she faltered. She turned back slightly and looked at him square in the face for the first time since meeting up with him in the Unknown Regions. He was smiling, it was small and unsure and a little forced but it was a smile. It made him look like Revan.

"It's hard for me to be the person you remember."

"Revan-"

"No! …I'm not Revan. I mean, I'm not the Revan you know. I mean, what I'm trying to say is I'm not the Revan you remember. I'm a different Revan. A new Revan."

"A changed Revan?" She said sarcastically, so eager and willing to fall back into old habits. She had always regretted the bad terms they left each other on, and she had wept bitterly when she heard that Revan had been killed by Malak. She had wept for Malak too of course. Watching the holovids report on her best friends' deaths had been painful and it had been the first and only time she had been thankful she had lost the Force. She knew that feeling the loss of her friends would most likely have turned her to the dark side. But now! Now, all that was behind them! Revan was alive and despite rocky beginnings they could take up their friendship once more. She smiled. He shook his head.

"I'm saying, the Jedi erased those memories from me. They took away the Revan that used to be and gave me a whole new life, a happy life. Then, old Revan's memories started flooding back to me in horrible bits and pieces. And I'm torn between the new Revan that I want to be and the old Revan that I really am." His eyes pleaded with her to understand, but how could she? What he was saying made no sense! Only it made all the sense in the world. His silence, so unlike the Revan she knew, was a guilty awkward silence because he wasn't the Revan she knew. He had no idea what to say to her because he didn't know her!

"You don't remember anything about me?" She breathed, a little confused and a lot of hurt.

"I remember you. It fades in and out between old Revan and new Revan. Sometimes I can't decide if what I'm remembering is the real or the made-up. Sometimes I-." He stopped himself from continuing. It was too late, the Exile had already picked up his train of thought.

"Sometimes you what? Don't want to remember? Is that it?!" He winced beneath her screeching question. "I went to war for you! I killed for you! I was exiled for you! I lost my connection to the Force for you! And now I've left everything I love behind so that I could follow you on some fool's errand into the depths of space and you don't even want to be bothered to remember my name!"

Silence befell the dormitory as the Exile sat with her arms crossed on her bed and her gaze turned away from Revan. She knew it wasn't his fault but she still felt her heart burn and ache. Was she really so burdensome to remember? She had been told that she wasn't extraordinary. That she didn't have a sparkle to her that some of the other padawans had. She had been called boring and bland. Were all these things true? In Revan's mind she was one of the many faceless troops that might have died for him in the war. The war that he might only be dreaming up.

"I know that I can't be both Revans." Revan said softly. She didn't look at him but instead thought of the war. She thought of how Revan's shaking hand had clasped her shoulder as they walked away from the Enclave, his face a little pale but his smile strong and confident. She thought of how the forest of Dxun had smelled after the rain and how her boots had stuck and sunk in the mud. She thought of the last time she saw Malak and how her words to him had been unkind. She thought of Malachor V and the emptiness that followed so much death.

"No, what you know is that the only Revan you can be, the only Revan you know how to be, is the Revan that went to war. You're just afraid to be that Revan because you think you'll just fall to the Dark Side again."

"I just want to be happy. I want the galaxy to be at peace."

"Revan, if you hadn't remembered who you were then Malak would still be destroying planets. The Force wanted you to remember who you were. The Force has plans for you."

"What kind of plans could the Force possibly have for me?"

"To defeat this new threat, to rebuild the Jedi Order, to bring peace and unity to the Galaxy… Do I really need to continue? You've always been destined for great things. Even when we were younger everyone knew it." Revan shook his head and sat himself next to the Exile. She had relaxed, her figure no longer tense with anger and betrayal. He stared down at his boots, his expression deep and contemplating.

"What does the Force have planned for you?" The Exile shrugged. This was a question she had never thought about. When had there been time? The War had come and she had followed its call of adventure. Then she had lost the Force and therefore any plans it had laid out for her, simply following her depression wherever it took her. When the Force returned to her she was obsessed with knowing why it left and so she followed the scattered Jedi Council. She looked at Revan and smiled.

"I think I'm just supposed to follow," she shrugged again, "and do what I can for whoever I'm following." She had never felt as at home and comfortable with herself as she had while fighting in the War. She had enjoyed carrying out the orders of Revan and the higher ups to the greatest of her ability and never giving up no matter how hard the mission was. She had enjoyed inspiring her troops and teaching them to reach the depths of their hidden potential in order to defeat their enemies. She was at her best when she was executing orders and commanding troops.

"So you'll stay and follow?"

"And help you to remember that you're Revan, nothing more and nothing less."


End file.
